Lesson #352: Don’t Exaggerate to Your Waiter

Customers are notorious for exaggerating their situation to make it seem like it is much worse than it really is. For example, when someone says, “This coffee is ice cold, I want another cup,” that is an exaggeration. We know the coffee is not actually ice cold. Really? You’re saying to me that the coffee I poured into your cup about six minutes ago has somehow managed to drop 160° from the recommended 192° all the way down to to 32°? Right. Exaggeration! Or when someone says, “Where is our food? It’s taking forever,” that is an exaggeration. Really? Forever is a long time and how can we really define forever until the end of time has happened, which it hasn’t so nothing can take forever. Exaggeration! A lady last night at table 42 was guilty of this gross exaggeration but I proved to that bitch that she was wrong.

It was a busy night at the club with a lot of people all showing up at once for a 7:00 show. Most of them did not get there at at 6:30 as we suggest. I was training someone last night so my regular routine was talking a bit longer than normal since I was having to explain how to do everything rather than just do it. (I won’t even get into the fact that when I got my first restaurant job this trainee wasn’t even born yet. If I let myself dwell on that, I will take the apron from around my waist and strangle myself with it.) I could see out of the corner of my eye that table 42 had been sat with a six top and I slowly was making my way to that side of the room to get their drink order. When I got to them, the lady was visibly upset.

“How are we supposed to have a two-drink minimum through the course of the show when we have already been sitting here for thirty minutes without anyone taking our first order?” she snorted.

I inhaled deeply and counted to one. With a smile on my face, I said, “I don’t think you’ve been sitting here for thirty minutes.”

“Yes, we have and no one has been to us yet.”

“No ma’am, you haven’t.”

“Yes, thirty minutes.”

Clearly I was going to have to set this lady straight by stuffing a stop watch up her mop twat. I looked at my watch and saw that it was 7:02. We didn’t open the house until 6:40. The section this tardy bitch was in is sat last because it’s at the back of the room meaning they got there too late to be seated anywhere else. I cleared my throat. “The first person was sat twenty-two minutes ago when we opened the house. I know that you were not the first person sat, therefore it is impossible that you have been sitting here for thirty minutes.”

“Well, we have been at the club for thirty minutes, then.”

That’s different. If you’re in the bathroom I am not going to crawl into the stall and ask you if you want your fucking white zinfandel with ice or not. If you’re in the lobby, I’m not going to walk out there and randomly ask people what they want to drink on the off chance that they might end up in my station. She had been sitting at the table for about twelve minutes. “Well, I’m here now and the show hasn’t started yet and you still have a two-drink minimum. The show is an hour and fifteen minutes long, so I think you will be fine. What would you like to drink?”

She ordered a Cosmo and told me she wanted it for her second round too. I brought her drink about four minutes later and then about ten minutes after that I took out her second Cosmo just so she could have plenty of fucking time to drink it since she was so concerned about it. You know what, lady? If you have such an issue with the time, maybe you should invest in a watch and then use it. Don’t show up at 6:50 when we advise you to get there at 6:30. And don’t exaggerate to prove your point. I bet she also says shit like:

“The mall was so crowded; everyone in the world was there.” No, 6.94 billion people were not shopping at Chico’s.

“Can you turn up the air conditioning in here? It’s so hot, my blood is boiling.” No, your blood is not boiling, that’s impossible. Zombie bitches who shop at Chico’s don’t have blood.

Please don’t exaggerate to your waiter. If you tell me that you ordered your food thirty minutes ago, all I will do is go to the computer to look at the time stamp, print out the dupe and bring it to your table to show you that it has only been sixteen minutes. You will be embarrassed and belittled. Don’t make me do that. Because I will.

23 thoughts on “Lesson #352: Don’t Exaggerate to Your Waiter”

Totally know how this is.Working in coffee, costumers try to pull that crap all the time.If you order your coffee with 8 sugars, of course its going to be "Too extra super sweet!" and even though I know I made it right, I have to go and make it again…and again…and again.Bitch should just learn what she wants in her coffee, instead of ruining my day.

These are the same people who complain about food being cold, when you grabbed it the minute it appeared in the window, and it's still steaming once It's placed on the table. Also, this table is the table you stop worrying about, halfway through serving them, because you already know you're getting s#!t for a tip, so you might as well focus on the other tables who WILL TIP you! Ugh.. we are masochists! Lol

"Are you going to bring me some bread?" No. I'm not just because you asked. I'll bring EVERYONE else bread, but you. You eat here 3 times a week …. You always get bread. Have you EVER not had bread???? Sorry got excited. I feel you, totally.

Oh damn, I hate that. Reminds me of Dane Cook's joke about breaking up with his girlfriend because she exaggerates. Wish I could break up with my customers…or bean them on the head with the heaviest plate we have.

Jesus fucking Christ. Between this post and your previous one about the line cook and his banal pleasantries, I wonder if you could get any more inane. It's like a retarded online version of the stand-up gags before an episode of Seinfeld around here – "And whaaaaat's the deal with people exaggerating????"I forget why I started following, but I know why I won't be reading in the future.

Whew, with Anonymous gone, maybe you won't keep getting stupid people responding. He is the only stupid one, right? Okay, I am breaking my rule about never responding about anonymously, because I don't want Anonymous coming to my blog, bothering me. The line cook was hilarious.

I get so annoyed with people for exaggerating like this…Yes, you may have been in the restaurant for 30 minutes but you were only seated 15 minutes ago and you only ordered 10 minutes ago so shut the f*ck up! I had one guy tell me on a very busy Sunday morning shift that he waited 45 minutes for his food–he waited 30 minutes because the servers time the checks–and he ordered one of our baked pancakes which take at least 15 minutes to cook so what is your point? It's busy, church boy and all of you God people have this NEED to get breakfast at the same time so of course it's going to take a little longer–Heck! We've even written that on our menu cover that all of our food is cooked to order–meaning fresh–so sometimes it will take longer than usual especially when we're busy. What pissed me off about Mr. 45 Minutes is that he then had the nerve to say he waited that long for food during the week–nope…not true at all. If that happened during the week then I am pretty sure MOST of my customers wouldn't come back at all. Plus I would definitely know about it and I would have written his meal off and apologized profusely for the wait. I barely recognized the guy. He couldn't even look me in the eyes when he was saying this…jerk!

I had a very similar thing happen at my restaurant on a Sunday. It was lunch time when the post church crown comes in. I was managing and one server comes to me with a customer complaint, as I’m grabbing food out of the window. HIS FOOD. (Well done burger, of course.) He claimed it had been 45 minutes and when I explained to him that it had not been 45 mins, he jumped up from the table shouting, “who’s the customer here?!” I gave him the exact reason why I knew it had only been 17, and you better believe that asshole shut the fuck up and ate his damn well done hamburger. His teenage daughter looked mortified.

Blame it on the Full Moon….It brings out all the nut-jobs.I'll go you one better with the woman who INSISTED that we had a certain salad on the menu (that she couldn't remember except for TWO ingredients that we have used occasionally on specials). When informed that we had no such salad (but one similar), she insisted that it USED to be on the menu. "No ma'am….not in the 8 yrs I've been here". (you're most likely confusing us with another restaurant altogether)The woman rephrased the same question 10 different ways trying to jog MY memory for the salad she couldn't really remember. (but it was REALLY good!) When she finally asked me, "Well if it WAS on the special board, what would be on it?", I knew it was time to put an end to the absurdity. I told her (for the last time) to READ the menu and out of the salad ingredients I could custom create something for her if she could TELL me what she wanted~ if not, she needed to move on to Plan B.